Deliver memorable presentations: Do you want your information remembered long after you’ve left the room? Then structure your presentations with two important features. Be impressive and engaging. Impress and engage your presentation audiences and your messages will be memorable. Implement the following technique in your upcoming presentations and you’ll see a vast improvement in your public speaking results and your audience’s ability to recall your message points.
Impress your audience: Memorable presentations have a strong start and a strong finish. Audience attention levels are highest at the beginning and end of a presentation, thus, be strong at those two critical points. Start strong. Don’t begin your presentation with an agenda slide or information about you and your company. Start with information that directly affects your audience. Let them know that the presentation is for them. End strong. Don’t end your presentation with the Q&A. End with a strong restatement of your key points that relate to your audience.
Engage your audience: Memorable presentations connect with participants on as many levels as possible. Use spatial movement to get close to them. Move away from the podium and stroll among them. Use vocal variety to change your tone and pace. Let them hear your emotions. Use facial expressions to reveal your feelings. Call them by name and really bring them to attention.
Be impressive by employing a strong start and finish. Be engaging by using spatial, vocal, and facial variety. Structuring your presentations to include these two elements will set you lightyears apart from most speakers. Long after you’ve left the room, have your presentation message remembered. Impress. Engage.
Bonus: Want more assistance in creating a memorable presentation? Here’s an article from Presentation Magazine by Charles, “You get one chance to make a first impression.” Learn six ways to open your presentations with a strong start.
From the article, “Your start should be strong, confident, and engaging. It should provide the audience with absolute assurance that you are worth their time. All attention is focused on you, so it’s critical that you open strong as it sets the bar for your presentation that follows.” – Charles Greene III Presentation Magician
Great tips about starting and ending with an audience focus Charles. I love the phrase “vocal, facial and spatial variety”.
When critiquing people’s talks, Toastmasters often fixate on vocal variety and body language. But few people mention the facial or spatial aspects, which are easily as powerful. (On the TM website, there’s a video that’s very engaging because the speaker uses such animated yet fitting facial expressions. I’ll look for the link to show you…)
My most recent post (http://wp.me/p1PHR3-W0) is on the same topic as this, but I hadn’t thought of using primacy and recency, as you did. I did mention moving around though (as a way to highlight the start of each new section of your talk, which makes its structure more memorable). So the overlaps and differences between our posts are fascinating.
Here’s that Toastmasters video I mentioned. I love the variety and naturalness of her facial expressions – though when she breaks eye contact she loses me for a moment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1u7THOudfw
(P.S. Not sure about the script though, as most of it focuses on causes and symptoms, rather than useful solutions!)